Monsters take New Orleans

If you find yourself near New Orleans in January, I’ll be showing a bug monster/blue crystal piece at Barrister’s Gallery:

I Wish I Was Dead Biennial:
Works by Unsettled and Unsettling Natures

Curated by Martina Batan
(The Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Gallery, NYC)

January 9 thru February 6
Opening  Saturday,  January 9th  6-9 pm

Psychic Neighbor!!!

Joe and I are having a show at Ramiken Crucible, hope you can come!  You can see Joe’s work at www.joebrittain.com.  Download the press release here.

A Ritual for Elephant and Castle – NOMAD

Nomad presented a new performance with Chrome Hoof and Marcus Coates this Friday June 5th in London which I unfortunately had to miss.  Their invite had a pretty awesome animation designed by Le Gun:

From Nomad’s website:

Nomad was established in 2006 to facilitate new dialogues between artist, collaboration and exhibition in the public domain.  Nomad continually strives to build support structures for artists to explore non-traditional working and presentation methods. Our commissioning process is orientated towards increasing knowledge and experience for artists, collaborators and audiences alike.

Look them up at www.nomad.org.uk

Le Gun is at www.legun.co.uk

Death by fungus

I’ve been incorporating crystals into the bug monsters.  Here’s a snapshot of one, there will be more photos coming soon.

The growth of the crystals on the bugs reminds me of something I’ve seen before: fungal infections which kill insects.  Apparently the fungal spores get into the insect’s brain and take control over their brains; the fungus causes them to stop everything to perform one last action — climb up a branch and take a bite to affix themselves, for instance.  The fungus then begins to grow using the insect as a host.  As morbid as this is, the results are really quite beautiful in some cases.  What I also find fascinating is the symbiotic and species-specific relationship between a particular insect and fungus.  This means the shape of the fungus is always informed by the same insect.  Some photos below, stolen from the Neurophilosophy blog.  Link to full post is below photos.

http://neurophilosophy.wordpress.com/2006/11/20/brainwashed-by-a-parasite/

More to come…

In the process of getting the blog up and running.  Intend to use it as a place to show what’s in process in the studio, interesting research, or even failed attempts.

In the meantime…a crystals-in-the-works photo.  I’ve been experimenting with bringing the natural back into the bug monsters.  Interesting in how the crystals require giving up control of a process that is so detail-oriented otherwise.  I also like thinking of the crystals in terms of an infection with a life of its own.